Finlandia: Tondight for orkester, Op. 26, No. 7, was composed in 1894. It is not a fantasia on genuine folk tunes. The composer is the authority for this statement. Mrs. Newmarch says: “Like Glinka, Sibelius avoids the crude material of the folk song; but like this great national poet, he is so penetrated by the spirit of his race that he can evolve a national melody calculated to deceive the elect. On this point the composer is emphatic, ‘There is a mistaken impression among the press abroad,’ he has assured me, ‘that my themes are often folk melodies. So far I have never used a theme that was not of my own invention. Thus the thematic material of Finlandia and En Saga is entirely my own.’”
The following note is from a programme of the Russian Symphony Society:
“Finlandia, though without explanatory subtitle, seems to set forth an impression of the national spirit and life.... The work records the impressions of an exile’s return home after a long absence. An agitated, almost angry theme for the brass choir, short and trenchant, begins the introduction, andante sostenuto (alla breve). This theme is answered by an organ-like response in the wood-wind, and then a prayerful passage for strings, as though to reveal the essential earnestness and reasonableness of the Finnish people, even under the stress of national sorrow. This leads to an allegro moderato episode, in which the restless opening theme is proclaimed by the strings against a very characteristic rhythmic figure, a succession of eight beats, the first strongly accented.... With a change to allegro the movement, looked at as an example of the sonata form, may be said to begin. A broad, cheerful theme by the strings in A flat, against the persistent rhythm in the brass, is followed by a second subject, introduced by the wood-wind and taken up by the strings, then by the ’cello and first violin. This is peaceful and elevated in character, and might be looked upon as prophetic of ultimate rest and happiness. The development of these musical ideas carries the tone poem to an eloquent conclusion.”
Finlandia is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, triangle and strings.
“THE SWAN OF TUONELA” (“TUONELAN JOUTSEN”), LEGEND FROM THE FINNISH FOLK EPIC “KALEVALA”
Here is no swan, singing before death, a fable that suggested to Villiers de l’Isle-Adam one of his cruelest tales, and served Anna Pavlowa for an entrancing, memorable dance-pantomime to Saint-Saëns’ familiar music. This is the swan that glides and sings on the river of black water around Tuonela, the Kingdom of Death. Sibelius, to whom the Finnish epic Kalevala furnished subjects for several of his earlier compositions, by economic means, by an unerring choice of his instruments, portrays the scene and gives the song—after the hearer is acquainted with the explanatory note in the score. Suppose that the hearer had no knowledge of the legend, had never read of Lemminkainen’s adventures; how, to win the maid Pohjola, he set out to accomplish certain tasks, among them to shoot a swan on this River of Death. How would the hearer then be impressed? Surely he would be moved by the strangeness of the music, by the mysterious first measures, by the unearthly melancholy of the song, by the quiet intensity of it all. He would find in the music a tragic mood, simply but unmistakably expressed. To us this legend of Sibelius, for itself, is commanding music.
The Swan of Tuonela is the third section of a symphonic poem Lemminkainen, in four parts, Op. 22, 1. “Lemminkainen and the Maidens”; 2. “His Sojourn in Tuonela”; 3. “The Swan of Tuonela”; 4. “Lemminkainen Homefaring.” These pieces are drawn from the Finnish epic Kalevala. A note on the score of The Swan of Tuonela runs thus: “Tuonela, the Kingdom of Death, the Hades of Finnish mythology, is surrounded by a broad river of black water and rapid current, in which the Swan of Tuonela glides in majestic fashion and sings.”
Lemminkainen is one of the four principal heroes of the Kalevala. Mr. W. F. Kirby, in his translation of the epic, describes him as a “jovial, reckless personage, always getting into serious scrapes, from which he escapes either by his own skill in magic or by his mother’s. His love for his mother is the redeeming feature in his character. One of his names is Kaukomieli, and he is, in part, the original of Longfellow’s ‘Pau-Puk-Keewis.’”